ARICHAT – Requests from two branches of Cape Breton’s post-secondary education system are getting some consideration from Richmond Municipal Council.

The county’s municipal councillors have agreed to join the Town of Port Hawkesbury in supporting a one-year lease for the Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) Strait Area Campus, which has asked for a new lease regarding a property in the Joint Industrial Park shared by the town and the county. This piece of land in Point Tupper is traditionally used for the NSCC’s Heavy Equipment Operator program.

While the NSCC had asked for a five-year lease after the previous lease expired on December 20, Richmond councillors felt that the one-year lease was more appropriate, although they sympathized with the need to provide this land for the Heavy Equipment Operator course, particularly in light of the Port Hawkesbury campus’ need to overhaul its academic schedule as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying social-distancing protocols in Nova Scotia.

In the meantime, Richmond County representatives have also given approval in principle to a request for support from Cape Breton University (CBU), regarding the proposed construction of a new Discovery and Innovation Centre to replace aging infrastructure at the Sydney-based campus.

CBU president David Dingwall made the request during a presentation to the November Committee of the Whole meeting of Richmond council. Six weeks later, following the county’s regular monthly meeting on December 21, Richmond Warden Amanda Mombourquette noted that it was too early for the municipality to consider financial assistance towards the CBU proposal but added that the county was certainly happy to provide the “notional support” that Dingwall had requested the previous month.

The warden noted that she has already seen the impact of CBU’s focus on bringing in more international students in recent years, with several of these students from across the globe taking summer jobs at such tourism-driven facilities as the Bras d’Or Lakes Inn in St. Peter’s and Cabot Links in Inverness.